I am fairly new to the forum, I have just recently started seriously delving into various threads. Up till last week I wondered why there was a "free-EMS" at all, i figured it was simply a die hard DIY group that wanted to spin their own ECM for kicks.....

A little background, years ago, like well over 10 years ago, I owned and operated an auto repair shop in the same building as an engine machine shop. It was just me and 50% of my work was removing and installing the engines that the shop next door was building, the other 50% was regular old mechanic work.One day a guy came in with a 89 chevy truck, he wanted an engine built that would perform better than the stock engine, cost was not an issue. So we ( the machinist and i ) set about ordering every reasonable " COMPUTER FRIENDLY " performance part we could find;Heads,-edelbrockCAM, -edelbrockIntake,-edelbrockExhaust, etc...

All of witch were supposed to work with the factory ECM, however, it didn't work out that way, not even close. The poor guy had thousands of dollars invested in this engine and it barley even ran. I called edelbrock and they informed me that i would have to have a custom chip (eprom) burned. This was impossible as the closest place that could do such a thing was 6 hours away. I found a company called tuner-cat that sold software that would allow me to customize the eprom, woo-hoo. Endless hours of arduous tuning later the truck ran fantastic. A few months later i stumbled upon a web page for building a DIY WB o2 sensor ( man what i would have given to have had that trying to tune the chevy! ).That site led me to another fledgling DIY project, the Mega-Squirt. Back then MS was very small, the first couple i bought and installed did fuel only, then came Mega-Spark, it was the same processor and circuit board as the MS but just did spark. Then the code merged, MSextra was born,... then MS2...MS2extra. All this was great, i could now tune just about any car that came through the door, I don't remember how many cars and trucks i built and installed MS systems on, but it was a lot. And throughout that time, MS was as open as it could be, regardless of what they are spouting now, back then you were free to play with the source code all you wanted, in fact it was encouraged. I still have the willette programmer i put together so i could burn blank MS1 processors, there was even dedicated thread for it. If MS has "never been open source" how do you explain that?

Sometime around MS2extra V2.xxx I had to close the doors on my little shop and get a better paying job (divorce sucks). I haven't done much EFI tuning at all since then.After a few more years playing mechanic changed jobs and quit working on cars altogether.

Some years back i stumbled onto this site, and wondered why someone would try and re-do what MS had already done, and why it was called "free". I figured it was a guy (or group of guys) that wanted to do their own thing, and weren't happy with the MS stuff for whatever reason, good for them, more power to them....

What i didn't realize was MS had changed.

This didn't really sink in till a few months ago, a friend at work has a mustang he wants to tune, and i still had at least one MS board, an early version of the micro-squirt module, and an EEC-IV adapter board in storage somewhere, great! I set about building him a "plug and play" computer for his mustang using the micro module and the adapter board. Only at some point in the build ( or maybe in the 10 years of storage ) , the MC9S12 on the micro module died. Minor problem i thought, ill just buy a new chip and figure out how to burn the boot-loader, I remembered from MS-past that guys did this all the time. I had a BDM that i had ordered years before, back then i really wanted to be one of the guys playing around with the code, but i never got around to trying it..... I ordered a new chip, downloaded some software, found what i thought was a good .s19 file to put on the chip aaaaannnnnd nothing.So i did some digging, MS has changed, to say the least....not only is it completely taboo to even talk about playing with the code, there are threats of lawsuits, and holly crap, did MS stuff get expensive.

OK, i get it, there were a handful of guys who did 95% of all the hard work coding, and they were also the guys who contributed countless hours on the forum and manuals, so they want to close it off and make some money on it, fine. but there were also a lot of us in those early days that cumulatively contributed 1000s of hours R&Ding new code versions and providing feedback. I for one found a bug in the IAC control of the early MS2. Just seems kinda wrong, am i miffed that now i have to buy another Micro-module? Yea, kinda, but what really burns is I used to be a huge MS fanboy, i felt like i was there at the start and helped build it up to some extent. looking at the site now, its completely anti-DIY when it comes to code development.

So, i get it now, This "free" EMS thing is what MS used to be ( or at least pretended to be ) .

Am i still an MS fanboy....... kinda , but i hope i can find time to start playing with a true DIY system soon. keep up the good work guys

Nice write up! Shame about your shop, great story about how you got into it, how it used to be, sounds a lot like my story, too :-) Good times, fond memories. I was one of the first if not the first outside James/Ken to run COP ignition with a missing+camsync, they couldn't tell me how to set it up, I figured it out. I did one other install for a friend in 2011 when FreeEMS wasn't ready for prime time. Never again :-)

joey120373 wrote:

And throughout that time, MS was as open as it could be, regardless of what they are spouting now, back then you were free to play with the source code all you wanted, in fact it was encouraged. I still have the willette programmer i put together so i could burn blank MS1 processors, there was even dedicated thread for it. If MS has "never been open source" how do you explain that?

To answer this you must first understand what "open source" means, it's not the same as source that's open, it's open source, a particular thing. Open source is defined by the open source initiative like so:

Quote:

The Open Source Definition

Introduction

Open source doesn't just mean access to the source code. The distribution terms of open-source software must comply with the following criteria:

1. Free Redistribution

The license shall not restrict any party from selling or giving away the software as a component of an aggregate software distribution containing programs from several different sources. The license shall not require a royalty or other fee for such sale.

2. Source Code

The program must include source code, and must allow distribution in source code as well as compiled form. Where some form of a product is not distributed with source code, there must be a well-publicized means of obtaining the source code for no more than a reasonable reproduction cost preferably, downloading via the Internet without charge. The source code must be the preferred form in which a programmer would modify the program. Deliberately obfuscated source code is not allowed. Intermediate forms such as the output of a preprocessor or translator are not allowed.

3. Derived Works

The license must allow modifications and derived works, and must allow them to be distributed under the same terms as the license of the original software.

4. Integrity of The Author's Source Code

The license may restrict source-code from being distributed in modified form only if the license allows the distribution of "patch files" with the source code for the purpose of modifying the program at build time. The license must explicitly permit distribution of software built from modified source code. The license may require derived works to carry a different name or version number from the original software.

5. No Discrimination Against Persons or Groups

The license must not discriminate against any person or group of persons.

6. No Discrimination Against Fields of Endeavor

The license must not restrict anyone from making use of the program in a specific field of endeavor. For example, it may not restrict the program from being used in a business, or from being used for genetic research.

7. Distribution of License

The rights attached to the program must apply to all to whom the program is redistributed without the need for execution of an additional license by those parties.

8. License Must Not Be Specific to a Product

The rights attached to the program must not depend on the program's being part of a particular software distribution. If the program is extracted from that distribution and used or distributed within the terms of the program's license, all parties to whom the program is redistributed should have the same rights as those that are granted in conjunction with the original software distribution.

9. License Must Not Restrict Other Software

The license must not place restrictions on other software that is distributed along with the licensed software. For example, the license must not insist that all other programs distributed on the same medium must be open-source software.

10. License Must Be Technology-Neutral

No provision of the license may be predicated on any individual technology or style of interface.

Publishing the source with no license equates to this: All rights reserved.

This is what MS as a group did, be it on purpose, or by accident, but either way, it was misleading. The layman saw the source, saw no restriction, and thought it was open source. In actual fact B&G retained all rights in the original, and control of any derivative. The trick was, contributors retained control of their contributions (due to no explicit licensing) which is how Ken and James struck their sweet deal for a cut of the fat pie. MS3 is the reason for the changes, MS3 is not a B&G product, though I guarantee they get a slice of the pie there, too. This is a DIYAutoTune and K&J product, and it's pricey and lucrative. IE, it's good to slowly kill off those pesky other products, the old fun ones, by restricting the shit of them explicitly.

Perhaps one day we'll see you helping R&D some of our code. This year should be a good one, however I've said that before and January/February have already been written off to a large extent by forces beyond my control.

joey120373, good writeup and compelling read. I hope, as Fred expressed, that you'll get involved with FreeEMS. Your history and skill set look to be very experienced and it's likely, here, that you'll rediscover the sense of enjoyment you once had.

I'm a little aloof lately, but feel free to jump into the IRC channels if you have time to spare:

Thanks, I look forward to jumping into this project, as far as what I can contribute I'm not sure. I fairly new to C ( or C+ ), while m not a complete newb I definely have a lot to learn. Good news is this project offers a compelling reason to take the plunge. I am fairly adept at using the arduino environment, but blinking LEDs gets boring.I am going to order a dev board and start fumbling around with code warrior as soon as possible. I'm sure I will be pestering this forum with a ton of "how do I" and " why " questions, so apologies in advance.

Ordered up a Jaguar bare board, looks like a nice board, but the all the tombstoned resistors make me wince a bit. Its a great way to save board space, however long term reliability in a car is not so great, unless they are potted.

Can't tell you how many dashboards i repaired back in the day due to tombstoned resistors breaking from vibration.

Yep, we know :-) clever builders reinforce then with hot glue, silicone, etc. Reality for a Jaguar is often low kms and regular fiddling. The 0.7 is a pretty solid design, despite the TH parts and lack of connector/high pain in the arse factor.

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